


love you til you don't exist

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Phil knows Dan so well that sometimes he wonders if he knows Dan at all.





	love you til you don't exist

Sometimes Phil blinks and realizes there's another person in his house. It's like saying a word so many times it loses meaning; there's Dan's face and Dan's voice and Dan's hands and Dan, he knows Dan, but he knows Dan so well that sometimes he wonders if he knows Dan at all. Because Dan is a human being, fully formed and independent of Phil, and is it really possible to know someone at all? 

"You're weird," Dan says, when Phil voices his thought. 

Phil frowns. "It's not bad," he offers. "It's kind of cool? To have that moment where I'm just like, what, and then suddenly it's all back." 

Dan stares at him, then shakes his head. 

*

"Do you really feel like you don't know me?" Dan asks. 

They're in bed, on their separate sides. Dan's got his phone out and Phil's reading a book. They're a still frame from a short film about the epitome of domestication; all the uninteresting bits that over time grow both comfortable and tedious and so, so, necessary. 

"It's not that," Phil says, laying his book open against his chest. One of the pages bends without him noticing. "It's like the opposite, I think? I do know you, but sometimes I remember there might be things I don't know." 

"Phil, I don't think there's anything about me that you don't know." Dan sounds annoyed, probably because he doesn't understand what Phil is saying, and he doesn't like when he can't understand things. 

* 

Dan is moping. 

Phil definitely does know that. Dan has taken his cereal to sit at his gaming desk instead of joining Phil on the sofa. 

He tries to explain again. "It's just, I can't know you. Because I can't know what's in your head." 

"You can if you ask," Dan says. 

"But how do you know how to ask about what you don't know about?" 

"Jesus Christ," Dan mutters. "You make no sense." 

There's a strange pang in Phil's chest. "Yeah," he says, taking a step back. "See, I didn't know you'd say that." 

* 

He spends the next two hours editing in his bedroom, wondering if Dan will come to find him. Phil's not usually the one to retreat, and he's almost always the one to give in first when there's tension, to try and coax some kind of truce out of Dan. 

But this isn't quite a fight and he's got nothing to apologize for and neither does Dan. It's just one of those times when they both need to be in a room where the other person isn't to sort themselves out before they reconvene. That's alright, that's allowed. 

So he stays in his bedroom, whittling away at emails and skimming notes from meetings about them that they didn't actually need to attend, taking one phone call and knowing later Dan will do nothing but thank him for the excuse Phil makes for Dan's absence. 

*

It's nearing their early evening lunch hour when he hears the knock. 

"Yeah," Phil calls out. 

"You made me trek to the depths," Dan says, leaning in the doorway. "I'm hungry." 

"You could have texted." Phil closes the laptop and sits up. 

"I didn't know if you'd answer," Dan says. His voice does a cute little sheepish dip at 'didn't know.' "Which is weird, right? Because we always text, and you always answer. But I wasn't sure this time. Because it turns out, you're a human being and not actually an extension of me, and sometimes you do and say things that I can't predict." 

"Yeah," Phil says. 

"And I fucking hate it," Dan says. "I hate you saying it, and I hate you being right. Because there isn't much in life I feel very good at, and knowing you is like. The thing. The one thing." 

"It's not," Phil protests. "Stop that." 

Dan kneels on the bed beside Phil and crawls to him. "Do I know you better than anyone?" 

"You do," Phil says. "You know you do." 

Dan leans in and kisses him, teeth catching on Phil's lower lip and tugging. It's a silly kind of move, but it does something funny to Phil's chest. It's familiar; it's something he knows. 

But knowing doesn't make it anything less. 

* 

A quiet night, pizza of the most unhealthy sort filling their bellies and the television on as they lay together. 

"It's just," Phil says, because he's fairly sure Dan will only tolerate the topic one more time, and he's going to make it count. "You think it's a bad thing that we don't always know each other, and it's not." 

"How is it not?" Dan's annoyed right off the bat. 

From the outside looking in, it might appear to be a role reversal - like Dan's normally the one that lets things gnaw at him, like Phil compartmentalizes and represses. But they don't always fit into the boxes the world has created for them, and sometimes - in little ways like this - they are more alike than not. 

"It's exciting," Phil tries to explain. "Like I get to be surprised by you sometimes." 

"You think it's exciting to not know things," Dan repeats. "I just think, wow, what if he's not even in love with me anymore and I don't know it?" 

"Dan." Phil's mouth draws into a displeased pinch. "You know-" 

"I know," Dan says, interrupting him. "I do know. So please stop putting it into my head that maybe I don't know as much as I think I do." 

Phil begins to realize that this might just be one of those things, one of those pages they're never completely on together. 

So he nods and says, "Okay," because what else is there to it? 

He'll continue to enjoy the little unknowns and Dan will continue to fear them and somewhere in the middle is the ground they'll tread comfortably on.

**Author's Note:**

> [read and reblog on tumblr](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/165066654720/title-love-you-til-you-dont-exist-rating-pg) :)


End file.
